Born in Montreal, Canada, Stephen Lack (b. 1946) graduated from McGill University in 1967 with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and then completed his Master of Fine Arts in sculpture at the University of Guanajuato in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in 1969. Known as a multidisciplinary artist, he has excelled in the studio arts and theater and has acted in multiple acclaimed films such as Scanners (1981). Lack has been working and exhibiting in New York City since the late 1970s and is among the original artists of the East Village scene.
Primarily a figurative painter of confrontational narratives, his work often incorporates elements of landscape, architecture, and the automobile, all with luminous Fauvist brushstrokes.When asked to describe his art, Lack replied, "Everything I do is personal. My paintings are single frames from the life movie we are all sharing." Regarding Lack’s paintings and creative life, the late art critic Charlie Finch summed it up in Artnet, "He has been a movie star, a libertine, a devoted family man, and a prickly cat in a cool alley, but, above it all, Stephen Lack remains a painter of particular genius and depth." Lack has been living for many years in Salem, New York and keeps a studio in Manhattan.
His works can be found in the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, the Brooklyn Museum, Global Affairs Canada, the New York Public Library, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Art Collection, the Jerusalem Museum in Israel, the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Antwerp, and the Senvest Corporation collection in Montreal.